General comments

" In essence, the ISSN Network wants to avoid a proliferation of unnecessary new ISSN assignments and descriptions which would be difficult to justify to such users as publishers of the resource and end-users, neither of whom are likely to perceive any fundamental change in the resource when the mode of issuance changes, particularly in an online resource. ISSN prefers that where a change in mode of issuance does not coincide with a major title change and/or a change in medium, it should result only in a revision of the existing description; not in the creation of a new one. "

We don't need another reason to create new serial records. Particularly just an RDA-centric one.

-- Glennan (PCC), for Ben Abrahamse, MIT 8/28/12

I can certainly understand the point of view of the ISSN International Centre on this matter. Given the use of the ISSN as an identifier, the issuance of a new ISSN to the same (reorganized) content would have ramifications for all the systems that incorporate the ISSN in their own system of identifiers, such as the DOI and OpenURL, potentially spawning a cascade of broken links.

As to whether a change in the mode of issuance occurs at the manifestation level or the expression level, I suppose it would depend on the effect the change has on the content. If a journal is reconfigured as a database of articles, but all the articles from the original online issues persist in the database, my inclination would be to treat it as a reconfiguration of content in the same manifestation. Another manifestation might retain the original organization in issues while presenting current content as independent articles. With the proliferation of “online first” articles that are integrated into issues after the fact of publication, we’re already living in such a world to some extent. The organization into issues is in some ways merely a display convention. In fact, I could imagine an online journal that was organized primarily by the subject of the content but could reconfigure itself into issues for those more comfortable with that arrangement, simultaneously an integrating resource and a serial.

I remember the old ISDS Register in microfiche used to exist in this sort of in-between “Schrödinger’s Cat” sort of state. Each microfiche “issue” comprised two discrete parts: (1) a set of the most recent new and amended records for the ISDS database (added to the end of the existing base file) and (2) a set of cumulative indexes to the same, with each entry in an index pointing to the latest version of a given record in the base file. It arrived as a serial but became an integrating resource in practice.

So I guess I would say

(1) A change in mode of issuance is typically a manifestation-level phenomenon, since the content, in the words of the Working Group on Aggregates, remains “substantially the same”

(2) At least in cases such as I’ve described, the appropriate treatment for the bibliographic record is an amendment of the existing description rather than a new description (and consequently a new record)

-- Glennan (PCC), for Ed Jones, National University 8/28/12

NLM has some concerns about not making a new description when an electronic serial becomes an electronic integrating resource. If you keep the old description when the mode of issuance changes, and then the integrating resource undergoes a major title change, the original serial title could be lost completely. In essence that serial then has latest entry cataloging, instead of successive entry cataloging.

-- Glennan (PCC), for NLM 8/31/12

Constituency Responses

ACOC and LC both indicate a willingness to entertain a proposal to change the RDA instructions on whether a change in mode of issuance requires a new description. LC, in particular, offers some suggestions on the form and content of such a proposal.

[JSC Rep note: This is a discussion paper, not a proposal, so we do not need to decide whether to support a change to the RDA instructions. We can offer comments on the issues involved, such as those given above. And we can, I would presume, agree that we would like to see a formal proposal. -- J. Attig, 2012/09/17]